Expert insights. Personalized for you.
It was nearly five years ago when I started thinking about writing a book to share everything I knew about designing and developing eLearning. At the time, the mear thought of writing my own book seemed like an enormous task, and it was! In fact, it wasn’t my first time working on a book. MORE
PART 3 of 4: What Do You Want Learners to DO? Recap. Here’s a quick recap of the first two parts of this ‘Challenge’ blog series: 1. THE CHALLENGE: The company has received low grades from their clients for responsiveness to callers whose calls should be escalated. Call center reps aren’t escalating calls to supervisors at the appropriate times. Read the full first post ). MORE
Content for eLearning is only useful if the learner remains engaged. There are best practices you can use to ensure you are developing the most useful content. MORE
Make your virtual Thanksgiving a little more fun, and funny, with our Thanksgiving Bingo game! Just give the game link to each person who attends your family’s Zoom/webmeeting and see who gets to Bingo first! Feel free to download the source file and customize the text or graphics. MORE
If you’re an e-learning designer, chances are you’re often asked to take existing instructor-led (classroom) training and put it online. Chances are also good that no one’s ever told you how to do that. MORE
I have given a number of presentations on scenario-based learning over the past five years, plus a few presentations on other topics. I have also had the pleasure of being interviewed on several podcasts and video casts. MORE
PART 2 of 4: Determining the Business Goal. Client. Large financial services company with call centers across the United States. Recap. To refresh your memory about the challenger and the problem, read Design challenge – Part 1 of 4: Meet the Challenger. The first step in our challenge is to identify the business goal. What Is a Business Goal? A business goal describes the result we hope to achieve with our elearning solution; it’s the ‘What’s in it for me?’. MORE
It’s that course again. You slaved over that course for months. You did a thorough task analysis, you consulted with SMEs, you chased down stakeholders. You action mapped, you prototyped, you iterated like no one has iterated before! And though it seems like you finally launched your masterpiece just last week, a year has already passed, and the course up for revision. Where do you start? MORE
A retina display (verbiage marketed by Apple) is one that has a high enough resolution that the user cannot discern an individual pixel when looking at it from a normal viewing distance. In other words, the human eye cannot tell the difference between a photo of a painting shown on a retina display, and the painting itself! 1 As the number of learners with retina displays continues to increase, it’s important that elearning authors know how to support these super-high resolution devices. MORE
I recently heard a news story about the Ebola crisis where the expert being interviewed explained that most of the infections of healthcare workers occur not from faulty or missing protective equipment but from workers not following the correct procedures when they remove their gear. This reminded me of a prototype that SmartBuilder developed a few years ago about following correct procedures when exiting a bio lab. MORE
There’s a cool new elearning example on our website using interactive video. The video shows a customer looking for help in a hardware store. The learners’ task is to identify where service is lacking. At the end, the learner compares his/her responses with the expert responses. MORE
We pride ourselves at SmartBuilder Consulting on designing elearning that focuses on performance: helping learners do the right thing at the right time. Performance is what counts – not just reading a few pages then passing a “quiz”, which is really a test of short-term memory, or worse, an exercise in making good guesses (tip – the longest answer is usually the correct one!). MORE
It’s a good day in the world of instructional design when a client says, “We want your help making this boring training more interesting and interactive.” Even better is when they don’t just want interactivity, but meaningful interactivity. Barton Health requested exactly that with their HazCom training. The training had traditionally been driven by regulation requirements and had morphed into something that was less than engaging. MORE
As a follow up on my last post about optimizing graphics , I want to address a few ideas concerning the best image format for elearning graphics. When you create graphics for a course, do you save all of the images in the same format? That isn’t uncommon. However, you can use various image formats to optimize the graphics in your course. No image format does everything perfectly. You should choose the format based on the image’s characteristics. The table below can help you do that. PNG-24. MORE
Many organizations are currently looking for ways to provide quality employee training online. The remote workforce has steadily been growing over the past several years and current events have only sped up the process. MORE
Have you ever thought about how graphics’ file sizes impact elearning courses? Think back to the last video you viewed that buffered while you watched it. Buffering can make a video difficult to follow. The same thing happens when learners wait for graphics to load in elearning. Warning: Images you download from your company network or from stock image sites are not optimized for elearning. This isn’t all about the learner though. MORE
The recent pandemic has changed the business world and how we work forever. At the start, many leaders felt that business would return to the way it once was in months. However, as the situation persisted, companies began to adapt, and a new normal emerged. MORE
Many people, including us at SmartBuilder, are neck deep in the mobile scene with elearning. My experience has exposed many things that contribute to a positive experience on a mobile device. This post shares three things you can easily implement right away to improve the quality of the mobile experiences you’re creating. Size it right. Have you ever taken a course on a mobile device that didn’t quite fit on the screen? If you haven’t, take my word for it – it’s annoying and distracting. MORE
You settle into your stadium seat, popcorn on lap and soda nestled in its holder. The previews roll, the music swells, and your favorite actors’ names appear in starring roles. You’ve anticipated this movie for quite awhile. The title zooms in then fades. Instead of a dramatic scene fading in, the following text scrolls slowly onto the screen: You can’t wait to see what happens next. MORE
PART 1 of 4: Meet the Challenger. Client. Large financial services company with call centers across the United States. Challenge. For the past year, the company has received low call satisfaction ratings from their customers. Customer service reps (CSRs) aren’t escalating calls to supervisors at the appropriate times. This impedes the ability of supervisors to quickly respond to callers and resolve problems. MORE
We pride ourselves at SmartBuilder Consulting on designing elearning that focuses on performance: helping learners do the right thing at the right time. Performance is what counts – not just reading a few pages then passing a “quiz”, which is really a test of short-term memory, or worse, an exercise in making good guesses (tip – the longest answer is usually the correct one!). MORE
PART 4 of 4: Create Learning Activities That Work. Recap. Here’s a quick recap of the first three parts of this ‘Challenge’ blog series: 1. THE CHALLENGE: The company has received low grades from their clients for responsiveness to callers whose calls should be escalated. Call center reps aren’t escalating calls to supervisors at the appropriate times. Read the full first post ). MORE
Have you ever wanted to allow your learners to collaborate or compete within a lesson? Well, thanks to the magic of xAPI and the power of SmartBuilder, now they can. I’ll share an example in a moment, but first, some quick background. I just completed the xAPI Cohort, “a free, vendor-neutral, 12-week learning-by-doing project-based team learning experience about the Experience API.” source: Torrance Learning). MORE
As I read online, I bookmark resources I find interesting and useful. I share these links periodically here on my blog. In this post, I share links on L&D trends, training development time, spaced repetition, RSS feeds, and an overview of instructional design. L&D trends. MORE
This post is part of the Design Challenge series. If you need a refresher on the project we are discussing, look at Design Challenge #1 – Part 1 of 4: Meet Our First Challenger. In this post, you’ll get a chance to check out a couple activities that we’ve developed for the project, and hone your activity building skills by critiquing them. Keep it “on-target”. MORE
Using Twine and the Trialogue story format, you can build a simple chat simulation in a few hours. I built the sample below in a little less than 2 hours, almost all of which was actually writing the conversation and choices. The story format controls all of the formatting and technical features. MORE
This post is part of the Design Challenge series. If you need a refresher on our challenger or the project we are discussing, look at Design Challenge #1 – Part 1 of 4: Meet Our First Challenger. MORE
Need to give certain users special privileges without making them full admins? Here’s how assigning user roles can help. Online courses of all sizes frequently run into issues where they need to give different users special privileges and permissions to run their course more effectively. Doing so effectively means knowing how to set up User Groups and designate Group Leaders in ways that will accomplish the goals you want for your course. MORE
Custom eLearning solutions have long been on the rise. Investing in online learning programs enables organizations to provide more flexible employee development programs that better suit modern learners. Many custom eLearning solutions can help your organization engage employees this year. MORE
One of the most important lessons I learned when I first started designing and developing eLearning courses was the importance of building performance-based eLearning interactions. However, this wasn’t a lesson I learned quickly. When I first started as an eLearning designer, I remember being constantly reminded of the importance of making my eLearning content interactive. I was told that interactive eLearning equaled engaging eLearning. MORE
SmartBuilder
NOVEMBER 25, 2020
Make your virtual Thanksgiving a little more fun, and funny, with our Thanksgiving Bingo game! Just give the game link to each person who attends your family’s Zoom/webmeeting and see who gets to Bingo first! Feel free to download the source file and customize the text or graphics.
SmartBuilder
NOVEMBER 21, 2019
There’s a cool new elearning example on our website using interactive video. The video shows a customer looking for help in a hardware store. The learners’ task is to identify where service is lacking. At the end, the learner compares his/her responses with the expert responses.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
SmartBuilder
JULY 24, 2018
PART 1 of 4: Meet the Challenger. Client. Large financial services company with call centers across the United States. Challenge. For the past year, the company has received low call satisfaction ratings from their customers. Customer service reps (CSRs) aren’t escalating calls to supervisors at the appropriate times. This impedes the ability of supervisors to quickly respond to callers and resolve problems.
SmartBuilder
DECEMBER 7, 2018
Have you ever wanted to allow your learners to collaborate or compete within a lesson? Well, thanks to the magic of xAPI and the power of SmartBuilder, now they can. I’ll share an example in a moment, but first, some quick background. I just completed the xAPI Cohort, “a free, vendor-neutral, 12-week learning-by-doing project-based team learning experience about the Experience API.” source: Torrance Learning).
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In 2021, many of your competitors will invest in talent development software. If you make the right decision, invest in the right software, and if your organization is willing to use it, you can realize five decisive competitive advantages. To see those advantages, download Paycor’s latest guide, 5 Reasons CFOs Invest in Talent Development.
SmartBuilder
OCTOBER 5, 2018
PART 4 of 4: Create Learning Activities That Work. Recap. Here’s a quick recap of the first three parts of this ‘Challenge’ blog series: 1. THE CHALLENGE: The company has received low grades from their clients for responsiveness to callers whose calls should be escalated. Call center reps aren’t escalating calls to supervisors at the appropriate times. Read the full first post ).
SmartBuilder
AUGUST 17, 2018
PART 2 of 4: Determining the Business Goal. Client. Large financial services company with call centers across the United States. Recap. To refresh your memory about the challenger and the problem, read Design challenge – Part 1 of 4: Meet the Challenger. The first step in our challenge is to identify the business goal. What Is a Business Goal? A business goal describes the result we hope to achieve with our elearning solution; it’s the ‘What’s in it for me?’.
SmartBuilder
NOVEMBER 16, 2017
It’s that course again. You slaved over that course for months. You did a thorough task analysis, you consulted with SMEs, you chased down stakeholders. You action mapped, you prototyped, you iterated like no one has iterated before! And though it seems like you finally launched your masterpiece just last week, a year has already passed, and the course up for revision. Where do you start?
SmartBuilder
JULY 9, 2017
We pride ourselves at SmartBuilder Consulting on designing elearning that focuses on performance: helping learners do the right thing at the right time. Performance is what counts – not just reading a few pages then passing a “quiz”, which is really a test of short-term memory, or worse, an exercise in making good guesses (tip – the longest answer is usually the correct one!).
SmartBuilder
JULY 9, 2017
We pride ourselves at SmartBuilder Consulting on designing elearning that focuses on performance: helping learners do the right thing at the right time. Performance is what counts – not just reading a few pages then passing a “quiz”, which is really a test of short-term memory, or worse, an exercise in making good guesses (tip – the longest answer is usually the correct one!).
Advertisement
This guide identifies the biggest challenges for associations moving their training online and provides practical solutions so that you can hit the ground running. Download now to keep your members engaged and growing even in times of COVID-19.
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SmartBuilder
FEBRUARY 23, 2014
This post is part of the Design Challenge series. If you need a refresher on the project we are discussing, look at Design Challenge #1 – Part 1 of 4: Meet Our First Challenger. In this post, you’ll get a chance to check out a couple activities that we’ve developed for the project, and hone your activity building skills by critiquing them. Keep it “on-target”.
SmartBuilder
AUGUST 19, 2015
It’s a good day in the world of instructional design when a client says, “We want your help making this boring training more interesting and interactive.” Even better is when they don’t just want interactivity, but meaningful interactivity. Barton Health requested exactly that with their HazCom training. The training had traditionally been driven by regulation requirements and had morphed into something that was less than engaging.
SmartBuilder
SEPTEMBER 30, 2014
You settle into your stadium seat, popcorn on lap and soda nestled in its holder. The previews roll, the music swells, and your favorite actors’ names appear in starring roles. You’ve anticipated this movie for quite awhile. The title zooms in then fades. Instead of a dramatic scene fading in, the following text scrolls slowly onto the screen: You can’t wait to see what happens next.
SmartBuilder
MARCH 26, 2015
A retina display (verbiage marketed by Apple) is one that has a high enough resolution that the user cannot discern an individual pixel when looking at it from a normal viewing distance. In other words, the human eye cannot tell the difference between a photo of a painting shown on a retina display, and the painting itself! 1 As the number of learners with retina displays continues to increase, it’s important that elearning authors know how to support these super-high resolution devices.
Advertisement
Members of HR are known for taking on different types of tasks. Safety training isn’t always one of them, but in reality, it makes sense that it should be. Learn how safety aligns with the goals of any HR team and how managing it can make your job easier.
SmartBuilder
JUNE 26, 2014
Have you ever thought about how graphics’ file sizes impact elearning courses? Think back to the last video you viewed that buffered while you watched it. Buffering can make a video difficult to follow. The same thing happens when learners wait for graphics to load in elearning. Warning: Images you download from your company network or from stock image sites are not optimized for elearning. This isn’t all about the learner though.
SmartBuilder
FEBRUARY 6, 2015
I recently heard a news story about the Ebola crisis where the expert being interviewed explained that most of the infections of healthcare workers occur not from faulty or missing protective equipment but from workers not following the correct procedures when they remove their gear. This reminded me of a prototype that SmartBuilder developed a few years ago about following correct procedures when exiting a bio lab.
SmartBuilder
NOVEMBER 18, 2014
Many people, including us at SmartBuilder, are neck deep in the mobile scene with elearning. My experience has exposed many things that contribute to a positive experience on a mobile device. This post shares three things you can easily implement right away to improve the quality of the mobile experiences you’re creating. Size it right. Have you ever taken a course on a mobile device that didn’t quite fit on the screen? If you haven’t, take my word for it – it’s annoying and distracting.
SmartBuilder
DECEMBER 5, 2013
This post is part of the Design Challenge series. If you need a refresher on our challenger or the project we are discussing, look at Design Challenge #1 – Part 1 of 4: Meet Our First Challenger.
Speaker: Dr. Amy Titus, Managing Director in Human Capital at Deloitte Consulting
Join Dr. Amy Titus, Managing Director in Human Capital at Deloitte Consulting, for her exclusive session where she will be discussing the 3 guiding principles for the future of learning, and how these can affect the design of work in organizations.
SmartBuilder
AUGUST 5, 2014
As a follow up on my last post about optimizing graphics , I want to address a few ideas concerning the best image format for elearning graphics. When you create graphics for a course, do you save all of the images in the same format? That isn’t uncommon. However, you can use various image formats to optimize the graphics in your course. No image format does everything perfectly. You should choose the format based on the image’s characteristics. The table below can help you do that. PNG-24.
Infopro Learning
APRIL 15, 2021
The recent pandemic has changed the business world and how we work forever. At the start, many leaders felt that business would return to the way it once was in months. However, as the situation persisted, companies began to adapt, and a new normal emerged.
Experiencing eLearning
MARCH 2, 2021
As I read online, I bookmark resources I find interesting and useful. I share these links periodically here on my blog. In this post, I share links on L&D trends, training development time, spaced repetition, RSS feeds, and an overview of instructional design. L&D trends.
Infopro Learning
MARCH 15, 2021
Custom eLearning solutions have long been on the rise. Investing in online learning programs enables organizations to provide more flexible employee development programs that better suit modern learners. Many custom eLearning solutions can help your organization engage employees this year.
Advertiser: Rosetta Stone
Communication is the lifeforce of any company. Without it, productivity, employee happiness, and ultimately your business suffers. Investing in language learning better positions global business leaders to see gains in organizational effectiveness as a result.
Infopro Learning
JUNE 17, 2020
Many organizations are currently looking for ways to provide quality employee training online. The remote workforce has steadily been growing over the past several years and current events have only sped up the process.
eLearning Brothers
APRIL 19, 2021
If you’re an e-learning designer, chances are you’re often asked to take existing instructor-led (classroom) training and put it online. Chances are also good that no one’s ever told you how to do that.
Tim Slade
JULY 18, 2020
It was nearly five years ago when I started thinking about writing a book to share everything I knew about designing and developing eLearning. At the time, the mear thought of writing my own book seemed like an enormous task, and it was! In fact, it wasn’t my first time working on a book.
Experiencing eLearning
APRIL 20, 2021
Using Twine and the Trialogue story format, you can build a simple chat simulation in a few hours. I built the sample below in a little less than 2 hours, almost all of which was actually writing the conversation and choices. The story format controls all of the formatting and technical features.
Speaker: TJ Seabrooks, former CEO at Rustici Software
Have you ended up with a collection of content inputs and data outputs that might be hard to wrangle? If your organization uses multiple LMSs and has content coming from many different places, or you’re heading in this direction, this webinar is for you.
G-Cube
JANUARY 3, 2021
Content for eLearning is only useful if the learner remains engaged. There are best practices you can use to ensure you are developing the most useful content.
LearnDash
FEBRUARY 21, 2020
Trying to decide which LMS will give you the most control and flexibility as a developer? Look no further than LearnDash.
Experiencing eLearning
MARCH 23, 2021
I have given a number of presentations on scenario-based learning over the past five years, plus a few presentations on other topics. I have also had the pleasure of being interviewed on several podcasts and video casts.
Tim Slade
APRIL 29, 2019
One of the most important lessons I learned when I first started designing and developing eLearning courses was the importance of building performance-based eLearning interactions. However, this wasn’t a lesson I learned quickly. When I first started as an eLearning designer, I remember being constantly reminded of the importance of making my eLearning content interactive. I was told that interactive eLearning equaled engaging eLearning.
Advertiser: Skilljar
Whether you’re looking to kickstart or expand your customer education program, you need access to a budget. Learn how you can demonstrate the positive ROI of customer training and make the case for securing a larger budget in our latest eBook!
LearnDash
MARCH 24, 2020
Need to give certain users special privileges without making them full admins? Here’s how assigning user roles can help. Online courses of all sizes frequently run into issues where they need to give different users special privileges and permissions to run their course more effectively. Doing so effectively means knowing how to set up User Groups and designate Group Leaders in ways that will accomplish the goals you want for your course.
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